Case Studies and Campaigns

If you want to be the best, you’ve got to surround yourself with the best work that’s out there. Here are a number of award winning campaigns and case studies that have strong strategic centers and incredible creative.

Troy Public Library Book Burning Party

Nissan: Gas Powered Everything

Baby Carrots: Eat 'Em Like Junk Food

This campaign for baby carrots (created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky) won a Jay Chiat Award for Strategic Excellence. Here’s a link to the case study outlining the business challenge, the strategic solution and baby carrots’ spike in sales as a result of the campaign. Key insights:

1. Baby carrots go to the veggie drawer only to be forgotten. The trick was to get those deliciously snackable baby carrots into a more visible, easily accessible place.

2. Baby carrots have the same qualities as junk food. Neon. Crunchy. Fun to eat by the handful. Instead of trying to convince people that baby carrots are good for you (yaaaaaaaawn), reposition baby carrots as the original junk food – perfect for snacking.

In other words, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Help: I Want to Save a Life

Rhode Island Food Bank: Nothing Can End Hunger

Intel: Human Processor

American Express Small Business Saturday

AT&T The Last Text

Kleenex: Softness Worth Sharing

American Express: Nextpedition

One Billion Hungry Campaign

There are a lot of campaigns devoted to alleviating hunger, but this one stands out. It’s the one billion hungry campaign and it features an outraged Jeremy Irons, a yellow whistle, and a petition. A few things that catch my attention:

Provocation. Anger is a more provocative force than sadness. These people are mad as hell that 1 billion people are hungry and they’re not going to take it anymore. Obviously, if every social cause campaign leveraged such intense anger, we’d all be angry all the time, and that would be exhausting. In general though, anger is a more powerful, motivating force than sadness or despair. What emotion is your social cause campaign tapping into?

The yellow whistle. The iconic yellow apostrophe that is also an iconic yellow whistle, encouraging people to “blow the whistle” on hunger. It’s clever, it stands out, and it has a function. What iconic image do you have for your social cause campaign?

The petition. I don’t have research that proves the power of petitions/pledges to increase participation, but it seems like it would increase the likelihood of people of follow through. Does your social cause have a pledge form to get people to commit?